Tampa - Day One

 What's worse than getting to the airport for your redeye flight to Florida (with a layover in Chicago) earlier than you needed to? Getting to the airport to find out your flight is delayed by an hour... :/ 

But it's totally worth it to be spending a week in Florida!  Apparently Florida is our new favorite destination... :) This time we took Bob and Karen Lawson up on their offer to let us stay at their house. 

After picking up our rental car, we made a couple of stops on the way to Spring Hill.

First stop: Clearwater for some food at Frenchy's Original Cafe. We had their famous grouper sandwich, hush puppies and crab fries. Wow! That's a great breakfast! 

It didn't take long sitting in the sunshine on the beach to remind us of why we have now gone to Florida 3 times in the last 6 months! 💓

Next stop: Tarpon Springs - The Sponge Capital of the World. This little Greek village is famous for the divers that go and spear sponges on the bottom of the ocean. Also had pretty tasty Greek food. We had coffee and chocolate baklava while we wandered through town... 

Before we left, we stopped at a little shop/museum to watch a documentary made in the early 60s about sponge diving in Tarpon Springs. It might have been a bit outdated, but it was educational and fun to watch. :) 

Not surprisingly, we didn't get much sleep on our overnight flights across the country and we were thankful to be heading to the house for a relaxing evening of drinks, dinner and swimming. Little did we know how amazing our temporary digs, and our hosts, would be! 

I wish I had taken a picture of the front of the house, because it looked a lot like all the other houses. But it wasn't. The front door opened up into the courtyard where the pool was. Our private room/bath was right next to the outdoor kitchen. There were also a couple of dining tables and a sitting area with a tv next to the front door of the actual house. (I didn't take pictures of the house either. It just seemed awkward.)  It was like having an outdoor living room/dining room in your house. The entire house was amazing! 

After one more starlight swim, it was off to bed for a good night's sleep before our big first full day in Tampa...